Does Jesus Have Anything to Do With Our Politics?

Well the political world is in a frenzy these days, everyone’s making speculations, mud is being thrown in every direction and some of us are picking sides (The first and last link are somewhat unrelated to the larger topic, I just posted them for fun). And I keep wondering if Jesus has anything to do with this? I mean, as Christians we have particular values we think are super important right? But when it comes down to it, it seems like we often vote more on our ideologies than on virtues and practices we find in the life of Jesus. I think this is the point “Marvin Bloom” may be trying to make (see first link above). And in a way it’s hard to keep playing the game of pretending we’ve got it all figured out (a point I take away from the last link above).

I ran across this quote the other day and it got me thinking about all this:

For Christians, a great tension therefore exists in our day between the gospel and ideology, betewen following Jesus and serving idols. The countrast is razor-sharp. There was only one way that Christ could conquer the powers of this world and make ‘a public spectale of them:’ he did not seek his own well-being, he distanced hiself form every pursuit of power, and he prefered to obey God’s commands rather than to look after his own idenity as the Song of God (phil. 2:6-11; Col. 2:15).

Many of use as Christians have systematically suppressed this knowledge of the Savior. We have selected our own goals, delivered ourselves over to various ideologies, and thus have unwittingly worshipped demonic powers. We have built our own empire rather than serving God’s kingdom. Following that course has been the deepest cause of our political fragmentation. It has been the ruin of the Christian church (Goudzwaard et al, Hope In Troubled Times, 128).

If we ran down our particular voting blocks could we make clear connections to how we vote and the life of Jesus. Or have we built our own empires of ideology when it comes to these issues? Short of asking you “How you think Jesus would vote?” Do you think he has anything to do with it at all? Are the issues so unrelated that his life is somewhat irrelevant? Or do you see it as having some effect but not across the board? I personally wonder about it, not just for my own consistency but also for the church? Does Jesus have anything to do with our politics? Or is that the wrong question to be asking?